5. The First Draft

5

A long journey begins with a single step.

BEFORE YOU CAN create a great pitch, you first have to make a mediocre pitch. Don’t worry about the quality of the first draft. Just write down all the information asked for in the Investor Pitch outline, get the facts down, and collect all the pieces. Then you can begin to iterate and make it better.

When I’m creating a first-ever pitch for my own startup or for the dozens of startups I help with each year, I don’t fret over the story at this point. Nor do I worry about style. I simply go through the Investor Pitch outline, slide-by-slide, and drop in a few bullets of information on each slide.

RULE 12:
Your first pitch deck is just a first draft.

You’ll have plenty of time to edit the words later. Don’t optimize the language in the first draft.

You’ll be spending many hours tweaking the design later. Don’t even bother with a template for the first draft. Black text on a white background is sufficient.

Keep it simple. Do it quickly. Expect to throw away most of it as you make it better.